A stranger to Dean could hardly suspect that less than a century ago the Forest was a center of industry. Mining, quarrying, smelting, iron, tinplate, engineering, and other works thrived, but within boundaries so quartered by hill and woodland, that solitude was never far away. Of this, but little remains. Business of a different kind has grown, and the old sites have in great measure been swept clear, regardless of anything noble or worthy of remark that might stand amid the general ruin. Perhaps, in answer to the worst of the Industrial Revolution, such a reaction was inevitable.